Wednesday, May 16, 2012

A stench of rubbish wafts over the Palestinian town of As
Sawahira from the al-Abdali dump. The vast tip sprawls over an excavated
hillside on the outskirts of the town and receives a constant stream of
trucks carrying waste from nearby Jerusalem.

Israeli
authorities are proposing to relocate 2,300 Bedouins from the
surrounding hills to this site as part of their push to resolve "the
Bedouin problem". Simultaneously, plans are proceeding through the
Israeli parliament this month to move a further 90,000 Bedouin from
their ancestral land in the Negev desert in Israel's south to government-planned townships.

The
Israeli administration argues that a move to purpose-built communities
will lift the indigenous population from unacceptable depths of poverty.
Across Israeli-controlled territory, Bedouin communities argue that
their culture, along with centuries-old ties to land, is being swept
aside to make way for Jewish expansion.
Around 250 Bedouins
from the Jahalin group already live on the fringes of the As Sawahira
dump, moved here by the Israeli authorities 15 years ago from land now
occupied by the Ma'ale Adumim settlement. Their modest homes and huts
are overlooked by piles of rubbish on one side and the Kfar Adumim
settlement on the other.

"I'm sure the dump is very
damaging for our health, but the Israelis moved us here – we had no
choice," says Abu Jahalin, 70. He has heard of the plans to move
thousands more Bedouins to the dump. He points to the proposed site with
his walking stick, explaining that it will run all the way from the top
of the hill, where his sheep graze, to the piles of rubbish.

Abu
Jahalin says there is not enough land to feed the animals already here:
"They [the Israelis] will wall off the whole area so there will be
nowhere for us to graze our animals. I'll probably end up feeding them
at home. I've had to sell off most of my flock [of sheep] already to pay
for animal feed." From a flock of more than 200, he has only 40 sheep
left.

Khan al-Ahmar is one of 20 Bedouin communities in the
E1 area outside Jerusalem that are scheduled to be evacuated. Bedouin
families have lived in this village since 1951, after they fled as
refugees from the Negev during the Israeli war of independence.

They live in the West Bank, but their land is controlled by the Israelis as it falls within Area C. The EU is funding Oxfam to run development programmes here. The Palestinian Authority is drafting a strategy to address their needs – but, ultimately, their fate is in Israeli hands.

In 1975, Israel declared the areaa
closed military zone. Today, almost every structure has been issued
with a demolition order. A spokesman for the Israeli civil
administration confirmed it is negotiating with the E1 Bedouins to move
them and is investigating the dump as a possible relocation point.

"We
are waiting for the results of an investigation into the health impacts
of living on that site," Major Guy Inbar says. "I know they don't want
[to move] but because they are living illegally, we have to find a
better option within the law. Why now? Because now we want to enforce
the law."

Unlike the Jahalin, Bedouin groups in the Negev
have cultivated their land since the 16th century. They are also Israeli
citizens, and yet 35 of their 46 villages are not recognised by the
state. As a result, the 90,000 residents live without basic services
such as water, electricity, healthcare, education or paved roads. And
they are not allowed to build permanent structures.

Thabet Abu Rass, the Negev director for Adalah,
an organisation that offers legal advice to the Arab minority in
Israel, describes a painstaking fight for the rights of unrecognised
villagers. "We have to petition the high court for each basic service,
like water. Most of the time we win the cases – but the problem is
implementation. Sometimes it takes 10 years. Or they grant us 'minimal
access' to water, which means one tap three miles from the village."

According
to a pending law for the regulation of Bedouin settlement in the Negev,
due to be presented to the parliament this month, these villages will
be evacuated in the next five years and ecah of their inhabitants
compensated to move to one of seven government-planned townships – the
poorest towns in Israel, with some of the highest crime rates.

Abu
Rass argues that while the Bedouin are ill-equipped to survive in a
town, they are excellent farmers who would thrive with state support to
cultivate their land: "The Israelis say they want to modernise them. But
modernisation doesn't necessarily mean urbanisation."

Information
gathered by Oxfam from Bedouin families in the West Bank last year
suggested that selling animals, mostly sheep, can earn a herder as much
as £21,000 in a year. The problem is that as their grazing land has
diminished, about half of this income is now spent on animal feed. Add
to that the costs of trucking in water and paying for fuel for
electricity generators, or investing in solar panels, and there is very
little cash left over.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for the
Israeli prime minister, says there is understanding between the
government and the Bedouins that the situation is untenable. He insists,
contrary to what is laid out in the proposed legislation, the Negev
herders will be offered a choice to move to a town or rural village.
"The
pockets of poverty and neglect in Bedouin communities must end. One
[Negev] village is right next to a terrible, polluted dump. No one
should be living next to a toxic dump," Regev says. "The solution is
that all Bedouin[s] live in recognised communities where they receive
the services they deserve."

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Rabbis for Human Rights continues their efforts to persuade Efi
Stenzler, JNF’s World Chairman, and Russell Robinson, CEO of JNF-USA, to
stop planting on legally disputed land in Al-Arakib. Click here to send these two officials an email.

Despite hearing from hundreds of people, KKL-JNF resumed plowing disputed land in Al-Arakib on Monday.

Residents of Al-Arakib have documents and other evidence of their
traditional rights to their land dating to the times of the Ottoman
Empire and the British Mandate, prior to the establishment of the state
of Israel. Yet the Israeli government refuses to recognize their land
claims. The State has demolished the village dozens of times in the last
year and a half, leveling homes, livestock pens, and hundreds of fruit
and olive trees, all to make way for Jewish National Fund forests. The
government remains embroiled in protracted legal disputes with the
residents about their ownership of the land.

Earlier this year, the leadership of KKL-JNF promised our colleagues
at Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel that they would not plant on four
plots of land in Al-Arakib that are involved in ongoing legal disputes.
KKL-JNF also issued a public statement saying that it “does not plant
even a single tree on land that is in legal dispute in court.” Russell
Robinson, CEO of JNF-USA reiterated this position to Rabbi Jill Jacobs,
Executive Director of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America, in a
conversation they had just last week. But now it seems as though the
Jewish National Fund is changing its tune.

Just over a week ago, KKL-JNF equipment arrived in Al-Arakib and
began preparing one of the disputed plots of land for planting.
Yesterday, KKL-JNF returned again and plowed more land for planting in
this disputed plot. KKL-JNF has spent the last month working on other
plots of land in Al-Arakib that are due to be adjudicated in Israel’s
High Court in December 2012.

Monday, May 7, 2012

After having their homes destroyed by the State over 30
times in the last two years, the residents of al-Arakib can do little
else but watch as a forest is built on the ruins of their homes.

The Jewish National Fund resumed cultivating land Monday morning in
al-Arakib, an unrecognized Bedouin village in southern Israel which the
quasi-governmental agency has earmarked for a large forestation project.
A week ago, the families in the village got word that the JNF would
return and asked for activists to come and support them.

JNF equipment, escorted by heavy police presence, showed up Monday
morning and sealed off the entrance to the village. Families and
activists watched from the village cemetery, the only spot that has been
deemed untouchable due to its historic and emotional significance.
Residents told +972 that JNF representatives gave their word in private
conversations a couple of months ago that they would not plant on a
specific plot of land - known as plot 24 – since it is the subject of an
ongoing court case. However this morning they prepared this precise
piece of land for cultivation.

Since July 17, 2010, the village has been demolished by
the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) more times than anyone can count,
and each time the families have returned and built it up again to
confirm their claim on the land. Despite remaining steadfast in their
claims to the land, most families have relocated to neighboring towns
like Rahat to avoid the anguish of constant destruction, such that only a
handful of residents still live inside al-Arakib.

Here is footage of the 25th demolition of the village:

The ILA claims the Bedouin are trespassing on state land, but the
issue is still being fought in court proceedings over land ownership.
While the residents do not have official land deeds, they do have
documents from the Ottoman era showing their ancestors purchased the
land in 1906. The state insists the land was appropriated in 1954 such
that court findings regarding ownership before then are irrelevant
anyway.

The issue of Al-Arakib is part of a larger story concerning 35 unrecognized villages inside Israel. According to a 2011 report
by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, approximately half the
Bedouin population in the Negev, about 90,000 people—live in
quasi-recognized or unrecognized villages similar to al-Arakib. The
government adoption of the Prawer Plan last
September calls for the uprooting of 30,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel
and their relocation to established Bedouin towns (with financial
compensation), thereby denying the community’s connection to the land
and way of life. Critics of the plan have called it a “declaration of war” on the
Bedouin community, since they are being treated like a security threat,
and not as citizens with equal rights.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

BREAKING UPDATE ON THE GROUND: The police have notified Sheikh Sayakh of El-Arakib that from tomorrow
early in the morning, by request of the Israel Lands Authority, JNF
people can starting planting trees on the lands of El -Arakib. The
KKL/JNF maintains that it will not work on the lands that they committed
not to working on, but can/will not indicate what those lands are.

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Principles for Arranging Recognition of Bedouin Villages in the Negev: Policy Brief

This Policy Brief by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Bimkom: Planners for Planning Rights and the Regional Council for Unrecognized Villages in the Negev was prepared with the assistance of the Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice.